Austrian shade

Fabrics just want to have fun.  You know, they want to drape and swoop, swish and sashay, and look smashing.  That's why Austrian shades will never go out of style, like swags: they allow fabric to look and perform at its absolute best.
So I thought I'd show off my latest Austrian shade, for Crosstown Shade and Glass, letting its fabulousness detract from the fact that this is my first blog post in a month (I'm sorry!).

While sheer fabrics swoop languidly, dupioni silk drapes in a delicious, crunchy way.  This shade is unlined, so we allowed more than triple fullness vertically.  The shade needed two cuts of 54" fabric.  We folded and pressed along the separate swoop lines to provide a stitching guide for the tapes.

We prepared the two cuts, sewed three rows of tape onto each, then joined the widths in the center and sewed the final tape.

 The sides were folded with a single hem and the tapes sewed over the raw edges.

In the old days, I would tie the tape strings to a post in order to shirr them up.  For this shade, I got to use my new Drawmatic clamp bar to secure the bottom of the shade, one clamp at each tape.

I began shirring the shade down the table. 

The printed grid table canvas allowed me to keep track of the length.

With the bottom securely clamped, it was easy to ensure that all the columns were shirred equally.

I use safety pins at every third ring as visual guides to check that the swags are distributed equally.  Once the shade is dressed, the pins are removed.

The rod pocket style is an unusual- perhaps old-fashioned- but effective way to manage the horizontal fullness.

This was fun to tackle this unwieldly project in the new, more spacious workroom!

 

I hope to have many more Austrian shades in my future.

love love love love love Austrian shades!

Snow day!

We're digging ourselves out of the blizzard/nor'easter! 
I doubt that I'll go to the studio today, but I had the presence of mind to bring my work computer home with me before Christmas- so I thought I'd post a couple of things from the past few weeks that hadn't made it into the blog.

Here is a hobbled shade made with Rowley's encased cord- super-easy to use and works really well.

This is the first shade using the encased cord where I've been able to tack the casing by machine- the shade was small enough to be able to manage.  Quick and easy.

There were 3 Austrian shades in this order- two with single sections, and this double.  It's hanging over my messy-looking (though amazingly organized, honestly) shelves in the studio, and you can see the shadow of me taking the picture.

Because the fabric is sheer, I used the cord shroud made by TechStyles.  I've done a few now with the cord shroud and have gotten more proficient with it.  Every single time it has been a different type of shade- Austrian, ribbed, hobbled, flat, and relaxed- and I've had to figure out a different way to use it every single time.     

Here's a view of the back:

Instead of regular Austrian shade tape with the loop "rings" I decided to use plain translucent shirring tape, the one that does tiny little pencil pleat type shirring, and clear rings, with light tan cord shroud.   

For this sheer hobbled shade I used translucent twill tape to "hobble" the fabric, with clear rings and the light tan cord shroud.  Clear plastic ribs are unnoticeable in their pockets.

Here it is from the front:

Last but not least, this sweet gathered London valance was made from a delicious soft grey flowery cotton lace for a powder room.

The weight bar pocket was made from the selvedge, and we used grey lift cord and clear rings; the board is covered in the cutoffs with white lining behind it.   For shade-style valances we usually put on a cord lock so it can be adjustable within 6" or so.

A ho-hum photo of a pretty Austrian shade

Please excuse the poor showing this shade makes in this photo- I was in a hurry and had no time to take a nice shot of this actually very beautiful Austrian shade.  And you can see I didn't have time to dress it at all, either- the flowers look all random but they aren't really, really!  They're just hidden in the messy folds.  I'm hoping the decorator will send me a pic once she's installed it!

Yes, it does bow in slightly.  That's one of the idiosyncracies of Austrian shades. Since I was rushing, I made no attempt to straighten it out for this picture; it will look straighter once it's dressed.

Funny thing about Austrian shades.  I might not get a call for them for, like, two years, then three different people will ask about them.  That's what has happened this month, so we'll see if the other two orders come through.  I hope so!  I love making them. 

They're like magic- yards and yards of just fabric, transformed into the most elegant and graceful of window treatments with the simplest of techniques.  They are spectacular whether one section, like this one, or a whole wall full of shirring. 

At triple fullness in length, however,  it is a lot of work to do all that shirring and believe me, my hands and arms get tired making a big Austrian shade, and the shirring has to be carefully distributed so that it's consistent all the way across all the sections.

Well, let's hope that there will be more to show you in the coming weeks!